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Essay on Arguments Against Skepticism

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If I tried to simply tell a skeptic, "That rock will fall from the cliff because of gravity," he won't believe me because he will simply say, "Not necessarily." In fact, this can be the skeptic's answer to just about any attempt to refute his position.

It has long been pointed out by opponents of skepticism that such an attitude cannot be taken to its extreme conclusion in the real world in which we operate- even skeptics must live their lives according to rules they must rely upon not to fail. Skepticism (and all philosophy) cannot avoid the cumbersome nature of human language and the simple fact that the only tool humans have to investigate the nature of existence is the brain, which spawns coherent thoughts in a lingual form. In day …show more content…

However, insofar as the skeptic poses the external question from the comfort of her armchair, Carnap will reply that ``Unless and until they supply a clear cognitive interpretation, we are justified in our suspicion that their question is a pseudo-question, that is, one disguised in the form of a theoretical question while in fact it is non-theoretical …'"****
"Calling philosophical propositions meaningless is usually very antagonistic; it amounts to using fighting words. Some of the less thoughtful critics of Carnap see him as (solely) making this kind of pejorative value judgment. Those who use ``positivist'' as a kind of academic curse word regard Carnap as merely arguing that philosophers should find something more useful (and more scientific!) to do than chasing their tails worrying about skepticism. This image of an antagonistic stance is bolstered by Carnap's intimate involvement with the Vienna Circle who is known to have gone through the Tractatus line-by-line declaring each proposition true, false, or meaningless. While there are certainly overtones of this pejorative attitude, a moment's reflection on the text will show how this is a completely wrongheaded interpretation of the claim that skepticism is a meaningless doctrine.
For Carnap, a terms gets its meaning only in virtue of its role within a linguistic framework. ``If someone wishes to speak in his language about a new kind of entities [sic], he has to introduce a system

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